A World Health Organization official says outbreaks might occur due to crowded conditions in displacement shelters and hospital closures, Al Jazeera reports.

“We are facing a situation where there is a much higher risk of disease outbreaks, such as acute watery diarrhoea, hepatitis A, and a number of vaccine-preventable diseases,” WHO’s Ian Clarke, deputy incident manager for Lebanon, told a Geneva news conference by videolink from Beirut.

The UN health agency has already warned that the system is overstretched and so far five hospitals in the country have closed and four are only partly functional, Clarke said.

He added that hospitals had been shut because medics had either fled the fighting or been asked to evacuate by Lebanese authorities.

Israeli forces have begun ground operations in the southwest of Lebanon, escalating a yearlong conflict with the Iran-backed group Hezbollah that has killed more than 1,000 people in the past two weeks and triggered a mass flight.